More Fallout For NSO And Israel: Gov't Police Illegally Deployed Malware Against Person Involved In Netanyahu Bribery Trial

from the one-leak,-apparently-endless-repercussions dept

More troubling developments for both NSO Group and the country it calls home.

Less than a month ago, both entities found themselves in midst of another turbulent news cycle, thanks to reporting from Calcalist that showed Israel police were using NSO spyware to engage in domestic surveillance. Worse, the people targeted weren't just dangerous criminals or suspected terrorists.

Instead, like everywhere else NSO malware has been abused, Israeli police forces targeted activists protesting then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's CVOID restrictions, as well as mayors of Israeli cities. Also included on the list of hacking targets were former government employees and "a person close" to a senior politician. In some cases, the police used the malware to phish for information from targets' phones, all without any reasonable suspicion these targets may have committed criminal acts.

On top of all that, the police deployed the malware without direct or judicial oversight. Utilizing a loophole in the law, investigators avoided seeking court authorization for these hacking attempts.

There's more of that being discovered. The Israeli government is conducting its own investigation of NSO and the use of its spyware. That has resulted in the discovery of more questionable hacking.

Israel police used spyware to access data in the phone of an individual involved in the trial of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a report said on Wednesday.

The hack, reported on Channel 13 News, was discovered by the Justice Ministry during its review of the police's use of the spyware.

This hacking -- like much of what was reported by Calcalist -- was also likely illegal.

The police reportedly claimed that the investigators never received the data, which was gathered against the police's procedures.

A failure to collect data is not the same thing as never engaging in illegal hacking at all, no matter how the police might try to spin this. The target of this attack still has yet to be identified, but the report contains a statement from the attorney representing Shaul and Iris Elovich, a couple accused of bribing Netanyahu.

There's also this tantalizing detail, which shows the police may have been lying in its earlier statement to Calcalist about every use of NSO malware being legal and authorized by the proper court paperwork.

In a brief statement that doesn't go into any specific cases, the police said “additional findings” from its internal probe “change in some ways” an earlier statement last month that ruled out any wrongdoing.

Hmm. Maybe don't offer up blanket statements when you have no other evidence but knee-jerk defensiveness when you've been caught with your hand in the domestic surveillance cookie jar. The only "way" the earlier statement could "change" at this point is to contain admissions of wrongdoing and illegal searches. That correction -- whenever it arrives -- is going to leave deep, self-inflicted bruises on the Israel Police.

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Filed Under: israel, spyware, surveillance
Companies: nso group


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  1. icon
    That Anonymous Coward (profile), 8 Feb 2022 @ 6:44am

    That thing that I thought it would take for Israel to turn on NSO, and here we are.

    "a person close" to a senior politician..
    Bennys son & his inner circle has been reported on some outlets.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    Ninja (profile), 8 Feb 2022 @ 7:15am

    It's not clear to me if the person involved in the trial was involved AGAINST Netanyahu. It's probably the case but it would be nice to know since it could be something systemic and independent from whoever is prime minister. Other than that it's quite shocking to see the tools being misused but it's hardly a surprise.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 8 Feb 2022 @ 8:06am

    Other fun stuff: These "LEOs" also hire/retain rando hackers to go after people.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    David, 8 Feb 2022 @ 9:39am

    Who would ever have suspected...

    Government oversight. Pick one.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. icon
    Coyne Tibbets (profile), 8 Feb 2022 @ 7:09pm

    Proofreading is your fiend

    "CVOID" - Is this fake news, a typo, or did Fauchi change the name again?

    I know, I know. I live in a glass house...but this did stick up, a bit like a sore thumb.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    PaulT (profile), 9 Feb 2022 @ 12:48am

    Re: Proofreading is your fiend

    Fun facts: Fauci has never changed the name of the disease, and the reason why the current name was settled on was an attempt to prevent conspiracy-minded morons from attacking people or destroying property like they've tended to do when the name given was associated with a place, people or species. It's sad how ineffective that was...

    Similarly, the reason Greek letters were chosen instead of naming variants after where they were discovered was an attempt to fend off the morons, but the conspiracies that have come out because morons have never seen enough of the alphabet to have read about omicron before is similarly depressing.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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